The San Diego County Grand Jury did the public a big favor last week with its report on how “managed competition” in the provision of some government services has great promise to help struggling local government agencies – either by getting public employees to do as much or more for less funding or allowing the private sector to take over some government functions and provide them less expensively.

In straightforward fashion, the 14-page document laid out the starkly different records of the city and the county. Since San Diego voters adopted Proposition C in November 2006, the city has been unable to execute a single contract under its provisions. Since county supervisors gave purchasing and contracting officials the authority to engage in managed competition and outsourcing in March 2007, the county says it has been able to save hundreds of millions of dollars.

This success is why the grand jury recommended cities and schools districts in San Diego County “study, adopt and/or piggyback on, as appropriate, managed competition, outsourcing, re-engineering and reverse auction programs” used by the county government.

Plainly, San Diego could go a long way toward reducing its endless budget blues if it had been as active as the county on the managed comp/outsourcing front. So why hasn’t the city done so, given that the approach was strongly endorsed by voters four years ago?

Once again, the grand jury report is plain-spoken and instructive. The narrative one hears from City Council Democrats Marti Emerald, Donna Frye, Todd Gloria, Ben Hueso, Sherri Lightner and Tony Young is that procedural issues and difficult negotiations between the city and employee groups have delayed Proposition C’s implementation. Grand jurors don’t buy that, characterizing what’s happened since 2006 as “political and ideological.”

It’s time this fight finally ended – in a victory for the San Diego voters who approved Proposition C by a landslide margin.